Floyd: Voices from the lost tribe of Texas GOP moderates

There might be a moment’s angry pleasure in pledging your vote to “none of the above.” There’s not much joy, though, in feeling abandoned.

And nobody feels it more keenly right now than so-called moderate Republicans, who have been shoved clean out of the GOP tent by the pure-D looniness of the ascendant uber-right.

Well, it’s not a surprise. The internecine war within the Republican ranks has been predicted for a while now.

Some people, of course, might profess not to care about Republican politics. If they care about the society they live in, they should.

Anti-government extremists aren’t just bellowing on the radio anymore: They are being elected to govern. What their brand of government is going to look like, I cannot really say, but I have a kind of jittery feeling about it.

This sentiment is coming to you not only from hectoring media robots (me), but from Republicans who say they have been disenfranchised without much warning. These include business-oriented fiscal conservatives, social libertarians who favor personal responsibility and privacy, even some of the early tea party adherents who embraced the goals of smaller government and a lower tax burden.

I’ve been fielding comments and messages from these folks for a while now. A year or so ago, it was Republican women alarmed at restrictions on reproductive rights and privacy. Now, with the right-wing race to crazy in full stampede, I hear from respected veteran legislators ousted in primary upsets by opportunistic ideologues. Or people who understand religious liberty is not limited to one theological flavor. Or people who support gun rights, but who also grasp that unlimited firepower for everybody, everywhere, the more the better, is not a sane policy.

A couple of weeks back, I got a fresh flurry of laments from the Lost Tribe of Moderate Republicans, appalled by a Texas GOP platform that endorsed discredited, homophobic “reparation therapy” that’s supposed to turn gay people straight.

This wasn’t necessarily the line-in-the-sand issue for most of the people I heard from, but more evidence of an abrupt takeover of the party by extremists who seem opposed to everybody and everything.

Here are some of the comments I have gotten from Republicans here in Dallas who just can’t stomach the crazy anymore. A note: Many of them use “tea party” in a broad sense to describe the rising crop of social and fiscal anti-government absolutists, for lack of a better term.

“I am one of those Republicans who feels embarrassed to say I am,” wrote one man. “These tea party folks have all but destroyed the old Republican party. It is as if we were asleep and we woke up and they had taken over.”

“As a lifelong Republican, I shudder when I read the absurdities being spit out by the GOP,” wrote another reader. “Sounds a little bit like early Nazi Germany.”

That is serious language. But then, some of these folks feel they’re on the injured end of a serious betrayal:

“The party which I once believed stood for opportunity for all left me,” one man wrote.

A retired gentleman told me he is contemplating voting — with distaste — for Democrats for the first time in his life. Says another: “Am I going to have to go to the dark side this November in order to make my distaste for the party known?”

But, as much as blue-state operatives might welcome this prospect, other conservatives say they can’t make that leap. They are left, they say, with no candidate, no party, nobody to vote for — and nobody to represent their philosophy.

“My wife and I are lifelong Republicans,” a reader in Garland said. “Our patron saint, Ronald Reagan, would probably be excluded from the GOP tent if he were alive and running for office today.”

They’re probably right. I expect Ted Cruz would knock the Gipper out of the running in a primary-night heartbeat.

“The party of limited government has morphed into a party which will attempt to legislate everything in our lives,” wrote another disillusioned Republican.

“I am a 73-year-old Christian woman who does not think I must impose my religious beliefs on everyone,” she continued. “What will come next, a return to Old Testament stoning for women and men who commit adultery?”

I can’t read the future, but I predict they’ll stone only the women.

Perhaps it’s wishful thinking to suppose sentiments like these might add up to a political backlash. There are a lot of elements that have gone into the bizarre rise of candidates who are anti-government, anti-immigrant, anti-education, anti-science, anti-everything that smacks of sensible policy.

But you don’t have to be a Republican to understand the painful frustration of the traditional GOP. I read it loud and clear.

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